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mopped his face.
    “Sorry!” he said rather hoarsely. “I suppose I’m excited. I was in the hall, and I heard your mother—”
    “Yes?”
    “Look here, do you care for that Brooks fellow?”
    “I am going to marry him.”
    “That’s not what I asked you,” he said loudly again. He pulled himself together once more, however, and went on more quietly. “What I mean is this: is it more of the ‘Hilda’ stuff, or isn’t it?”
    She examined the toast and turned it before she answered. Then her reply was rather as if she spoke to herself.
    “We can’t all let her down,” she said.
    “Let who down?”
    “Mother. First Father did, and then Aunt Margaret. It’s killing her.”
    “What’s Aunt Margaret done?”
    “She’s married a clerk in the store where she—a clerk in a store.”
    He stared at her incredulously.
    “Oh!” he said at last. “Oh, that’s what she’s done! My God, and you call that letting her down! Why, your Aunt Margaret’s got more guts in a minute than you’ll have all your life. Wake up, girl. You’re living in a real world, not a world of ladies and gentlemen.” His voice rose; his collar felt too tight for him. He ran a finger inside it.
    “Marry your popinjay!” he said. “Go on mincing through life. Drink your tea and hold your little finger out! I’m through.”
    Suddenly he saw the engagement ring on her left hand, and he lifted it and looked at it. From the ring he looked at her hand; it was small and shapely, but it bore the scars of “Hilda’s” work, of much living service. Involuntarily she tried to close it, like Margaret, and the sight made him wince.
    “You poor little fool,” he said gently, and kissed it.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    A FTER THAT WARRINGTON DID not see her very much. When he did, he fancied that she was thinner; there were hollows in her cheeks he had not seen before. And once downtown he saw her on a street corner, talking to Margaret, who was looking younger by years and with her left hand no longer clenched.” It gave him an actual pain at the heart to see that Margaret was growing younger and Holly older.
    They did not see him, and he passed by.
    But if Holly was looking worn and wretched, Mrs. Bayne was expanding daily. Cars came and people called. Old friends, who had apparently forgotten her, drove up in limousines and drank her tea and munched Holly’s toast. And when they were about to go, she would touch the bell and summon Hilda to let them out.
    As Hilda never came, they would let themselves out, but the proper gesture had been made. Inefficient servants they could understand; no servants they could not.
    But no young people came. The rallying was of the older generation. The young ones did not know Holly.
    And Holly was puzzled about her mother. There was a strange excitement about her quite foreign to her. From the day of the engagement she had been like some one who carries, warm and safe, a wonderful secret. She would sit and plan, not talking much, but with a half smile on her lips. Out of these pleasant reveries she would rouse, to speak of the wedding. Always it was the wedding.
    “You really should have bridesmaids,” she would say.
    “I don’t know any girls, Mother.”
    “Furness could get them. He is extremely popular.”
    Or it would be the trousseau and the wedding gown.
    “I have that old point lace,” she would say. “It’s in a trunk in the attic. And your Aunt Margaret is really clever with her needle. Perhaps I’d better go to see her. After all, nobody knows about her. I do wish you would take some interest, Holly.”
    It was during one of those talks that Holly looked up with a curiously direct glance.
    “How are we going to do any of these things, Mother, without any money?”
    And again Mrs. Bayne smiled her faint contented smile.
    “My dear child,” she said, “I have a little. You can leave that to me.”
    “You’re not borrowing it?”
    “Certainly not! I have a little laid away,” said Mrs.